It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written a full post. Today I am sick with a cold Glenn gave me so I’m taking the day off and parking my ass in front of my computer screen.

I’ve once again commenced work on the looong overdue task of removing the not-so-needed tags. I currently have so many that a number of them aren’t showing up in the list in the sidebar. It’s fun rereading old posts to determine what tags are truly necessary. After I’m done with that I may go in and finish removing all the extra comments that I had meant to take out well over a year ago. Yeah, I suck at site maintenance these days.

Because it’s also craft fair season I’ve been busy pumping up my stock. As a result I’ve been forced to cut back on my gaming time. Cafe World, which can easily eat up 2-3 hours of my day, was the first to be put on hold. I’ve also had to cut back on KotW though I am prepared to jump back in, in the near future. Don has been talking about resetting the game and putting a 50 member cap on all alliances. As much as I love being a Viking I have always wanted to create my own alliance. Plus, I can’t see how Vikings is going to pare a 80+ member alliance down to 50 without losing active players. So I decided the reset was a sign and will not be returning to Vikings after the reset (at least not immediately). I think I may have upset a few of my friends with this decision but it’s something I need to do. I will still be a Viking and actively play as such until the reset. I also won’t promote my new alliance until then (aside from giving info to inquiring minds walling me). There isn’t much more I can do to set their minds at ease. Sorry. BTW, if you’re a KotW player, and don’t already know about it, check out The Record. Lots of good stuff about the community that makes up the game.

The Teen is enjoying his new school. I had to deal with WPS, however, because the SPED dept. forgot to let the rest of the program know that he wasn’t going to the public high school. This week he’s in his first choice of vocations — auto mechanics. He’s loving it! Now if only we can do something about the homework.

Ben is still at Target. Recently he’s been bringing over a new friend. It’s a girl, but not his girlfriend. He’s an adult so it’s none of my business.

Glenn has been Glenn. His court case is over. He got 6 months probation and a $300 fine. He also has to participate in a 42-week anger management/abuse program per order of DCF. Every Thursday I get to listen to him get himself “psyched up” for the program. *rolls eyes* Unfortunately he is also on Administrative Leave while the Town decides whether he’s worth the hassle of keeping, so I have to deal with him nearly 24/7. Somebody please hire me now!!!!!!

Almost finally moved in. We still have the stuff in the cubby of the old apartment and there’s crap here that needs to be put away, but we have arrived. Funny how before we moved in Glenn insisted we needed more stuff, and now he’s bitching that we have too much.

We got lucky with the weather for the most part. It’s been raining every day since we began moving, but we seemed to get breaks whenever we were loading or unloading. The weekend was spent bringing over boxes because we couldn’t seem to get everyone in one place at one time. We rented a truck on Monday to move the big stuff. The furniture is were it needs to be save for the freezer (which we have to bring down to the basement via the other apartment), the rack (which needs to go where the freezer currently is) and the dining table (which needs to be were the rack currently is).

Verizon showed up Tuesday afternoon. While we wait for the landlord to install a phone jack on the first floor we are limited to the cordless in my office. Every one who has my old number will be getting the new one as soon as things settle down. The boys are overjoyed to learn that we have a wireless router. Now they can use it to get their Wii and DSes online instead of the Nintendo Wi-Fi connector, which was giving us some headaches.

I initially had some trouble accessing my websites, or any other website hosted by the company I use. It appears my IP address had been blacklisted higher up because someone else who uses the address (or an address from a range that includes my address) was prolificaly spreading an incredibly nasty virus. Contacted Verizon, who gave me a new address from a different block and now things are working fine.

I have the electricity and the gas turned on. There’s still a quarter of a tank of oil that the landlord isn’t charging us for, and since we’ve only needed to use it to take the chill off the place in the morning (with the rain it’s been wicked damp) I’m going to wait a bit to set things up with the oil company. I want to recover from all the deposits I had to dole out this past week, first.

I replaced the floodlights in the kitchen with CFLs. I plan on replacing the bulbs over the medicine cabinet, too. The rest I’ll replace as they blow. The outside lights are getting replaced with yellow bulbs, ASAP. Fricken moths!

We have already discovered some new critters in the area. In addition to the squirrels and robins that we regularly saw at the old apartment we also have chipmunks, woodpeckers and some bird that looks like a Blujay, only it’s gray and doesn’t screech. The closest thing I can find to it is aTufted Titmouse but the birds I see have black along the edges of their wings and a dusting of red on the back of their heads. There is a clearly a nest of them in a nearby tree as I a heard much peeping when an adult landed. I also saw a youngster hopping from branch to branch, trying to break in its wings. Thankfully, I haven’t seen any Starlings or House Sparrows, yet. I think I’m seen enough of them for awhile.

With most of the stuff put away I’m now torn between putting the rest of it away and resuming my housekeeping schedule. I really enjoy having a dishwasher. Before it was either I did them or deal with a half-assed job from the Glenn and the boys. After running out of hot water midway through my shower yesterday, I have learned that I must limit its use to the night time. I got a load of laundry washed last night (the good, old-fashioned way). I should check to see if anything is dry yet.

Aside from Ben and the preteen arguing over who gets what for each of their rooms it’s been quiet. Hopefully that will settle down, soon. Both have been shoved into the top floor bedrooms. I was originally planning on having one on each floor, until I remembered that the second floor bedroom has a ceiling fan. Rather than listen to them argue over it, or hear “that’s not fair!” if I assign the room to one of them, I just took it. Like the TV they were fighting over.

Speaking of which, Verizon has given us three free months of HBO and Cinemax. I should go make use of that.

Signed the lease, paid the deposit and first month’s rent on the apartment.

It is ours (at least for the next year)!

We began moving some of the boxes in. The preteen loves the place. He and a friend who helped with the boxes spent half an hour running up and down the steps. Ben likes it, too, and his friend, Husizzle, wants us to adopt him.

While we were bringing in boxes a Realtor showed up. He asked us if we would mind his interrupting our work to show the apartment to some potential tenants. Um, yeah. Just a little bit, maybe. I felt kind of bad because the “potential tenants” were a gentleman and his young son, but hey, it’s already ours.

We’ll be bringing the rest of the boxes over tomorrow and renting a truck on Monday to move the furniture. I am so not looking forward to unpacking!

In the meantime I’ve been trying to get as many services I use email for updated with the new email addresses. Yahell has been giving me grief by sending me to expiration pages every time I try to verify my new address. It turns out there’s a glitch in their verification emails. I figured it out while (accidentally) viewing one in HTML. The link, as it appears in HTML, states that Mailscanner thinks it’s a fraud, which it isn’t. There is, however, something apparently not matching up between the HTML link and the text link. When I clicked the link while viewing the email in HTML it worked fine. Once I got all my addresses verified I commenced to update the 20+ groups I belong to.

Now I’m tired. I wasn’t able to get to sleep until 2am and had to be up at 7am to get to take care of the lease. Spending the day moving boxes, too, wiped me out! I think I’ll go read the Consumer Reports I picked up at the library until I doze off.

It still has to go through Housing, but it looks like we have an apartment. As far as the landlord is concerned, it’s ours.

It’s half of a recently overhauled and unusual duplex. Most duplexes I’ve seen have two squarish units side by side. This one is front to back, making them narrow but long. Our unit is in the back. It’s three stories high and has three bedrooms. The floors are a little warped but I don’t care (I’ll just put the fish tank on the higher side). Everything but the refrigerator is brand spanking new.

Been packing since the beginning of the month because we have to be out of here, either way. If Glenn tells me that I have to put my “business” on hold to do more packing one more time (while he sits on his ass), I’m going to throttle him. Once again, just because I work at home it does not mean that everything else is more important. Asshole.

Since RCN isn’t available where we are moving to I spent half an hour signing up for FiOS, online. For about $20 a month less than RCN we will be getting slightly faster internet and a few more channels. The only downside has to do with the one thing I forgot to budget for: deposits. I had to cough up an additional $125 deposit for FiOS, and I realize now that I’m probably going to have to come up with at least the same for the gas and oil. *sigh* Hopefully electric can just be transferred to the new address. NSTAR sort of has a monopoly on the area.

Our goal is to commence moving next weekend. Ben friends have been noticibly scarce around here, lately. I wonder why that could be?

Now that I’ve gotten in touch with the important people (who should’ve, in turn, gotten in touch with the other important people) I can make this announcement:

As of 7/1/09 I will no longer be at this address.

We received a letter from our landlord about a week and a half ago stating that, after 18 years, he would not be renewing our lease.

I’ve already sent in an application with the Housing Corp. of Arlington. They have limited units but we mightget lucky. Other than that it’s been Craig’s List. If there’s anything at all listed in the newpaper classifieds, it’s all through realtors. With Craig’s List I can find units for rent by the owners. It makes it easier to find the places that will allow the cats (purr!), too. I am awaiting a return phone call from the boys’ doctor. With a letter from her I can push for a 3 bedroom, which we really need because of the boys don’t kill each other first I’m going to kill them both.

In other news, I’m still tweaking this site. Added Twitter Tools. You can see my latest tweet at the bottom of the page. I did this, and set it up to post a daily archive of my tweets, for those times when I have something to say but writing an entire blog post is more effort than it’s worth. I’ve also put back some of the ads I used to have when I first resurrected the site. I’m trying to figure out how to tweak how they’re displayed, so bear with me.